Roe lawyer proud of legacy

Sarah Weddington in town for Planned Parenthood talk

Ask Sarah Weddington about Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case on abortion she won as a young Texas lawyer 40 years ago, and she says, “I was wrong.”

No, not about the legal issues — she still believes as strongly as ever that the Constitution guarantees a woman’s right to choose.

What she was wrong about was her belief that the court’s 7-2 decision in 1973 would settle the matter, and the country would soon move on to other issues. The country has not moved on.

Weddington hasn’t either, although she tried. She did three terms in the Texas legislature, a stint in the Carter White House and 25 years teaching government in college. But there was no escaping Roe, for better or worse. She said she’s had some of both.

Now 67, she knows what the first line of her obituary will say. She long ago made peace with the fact that her life was defined by something she did when she was a Methodist minister’s daughter just out of law school, representing a woman pregnant for the third time who wanted to get an abortion when it was illegal in most places.

“Leadership is the willingness and the ability to leave your thumbprint,” said Weddington, who will be in San Diego Thursday for the local chapter of Planned Parenthood’s 50th anniversary dinner. “Roe vs. Wade was for me a way I left my thumbprint. I feel a great deal of gratitude for being able to accomplish that.”

Weddington said she expects at some point during the gala to be approached by someone who will thank her for what she did back then to make abortion safe and legal. That always happens, she said.

There might also be pickets out front and guards inside, because the fight over abortion is never-ending, often angry and sometimes violent. She’s been threatened before.

Does it feel to her as if 40 years have passed? “Of course, I haven’t aged any,” she joked in a soft Texas drawl during a recent phone interview from Austin, where she lives. When she stopped chuckling she said, “It feels like 100 years.”

Making history

Before she ever got involved with Roe vs. Wade, Weddington’s connection to abortion was personal. She’d had one in law school, in Mexico, after she and her boyfriend (later husband, now divorced) decided they weren’t ready for a baby.

After graduation, she couldn’t find work. She heard about a group of graduate students in Austin who were referring pregnant women to underground abortion clinics and were concerned about being arrested as accessories. She filed suit to overturn the ban.

When the case went before the Supreme Court in December 1971, Weddington was 26, making her among the youngest ever to argue in those hallowed halls. Her rarity extended to her gender: There was no ladies’ room in the lawyers’ lounge.

There were actually two hearings, the second 10 months later after two new justices were seated. She was nervous until she stood up to address the court, which at the time was all male.